~ A stay-at-home mom's perspective

Sick Toddler With New Baby

My toddler has been sick two of the three weeks since we brought home the baby. It has been so hard to keep the two of them apart. My toddler really wants to hold and kiss the baby all-the-time. We have taught him to kiss the back of her head and he has been doing a pretty good job about that. It is super sweet the way he wants to be near her. (Of course, this is right before he whacks her in the head or pokes her eyes…)

We took a lot of care to make sure our baby didn’t get sick. We washed hands like crazy. My hands got so dry they were bleeding. =( We also were changing ours shirts a lot. Every time I held my toddler he would cough or wipe his nose on me so I would have to change after holding him. I think one day I went through about five shirts. I also sanitized every thing almost every night. I got a new steamer for Christmas and I used it on everything. I also used Lysol spray and wipes. I feel like the precautions we took made it possible to keep our baby safe from getting sick. But I am glad that all that work is over!

My family seems to have pretty good immune systems as the sickness didn’t spread or get too severe. I am very thankful for that. I am also glad I took him right into the doctor this time instead of waiting. We were able to give him Tamiflu because we caught it right away. He took his medicine like a champ. One night I forgot to give it to him and had to wake him up to take it. I was afraid he would refuse, but he took it and then after cuddling for a few minutes went right back to bed.

I think we all have a bit of cabin fever. We went back “home” today to meet my sister’s boyfriend and it was so nice to get out of the house, even if it was snowing. I think we are going to go shopping tomorrow, we are running out of freezer meals/missing ingredients. We still have a bunch of ground hamburger, but no taco packets. We are also getting a little tired of BBQ pork sandwiches. I am not looking forward to spending money, but will be glad to get out of the house.

Hopefully, no one else gets sick and we can get into a “normal” routine. Potty training is going to start soon. It got put on hold because you can’t potty train a sick child.